Exposed: NSA Uses Google 'Cookies' to Snoop on Targets

[unhappycamper]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/12/11-1



Snowden docs reveal NSA using technology of online advertisers for spying

Exposed: NSA Uses Google 'Cookies' to Snoop on Targets
- Common Dreams staff
Published on Wednesday, December 11, 2013 by Common Dreams

~snip~

Internal National Security Agency documents provided by Edward Snowden reveal that the NSA and British intelligence agency GCHQ are using Google "cookies" to track and spy on potential targets.

~snip~

The intelligence agencies have found particular use for a part of a Google-specific tracking mechanism known as the “PREF” cookie. These cookies typically don't contain personal information, such as someone's name or e-mail address, but they do contain numeric codes that enable Web sites to uniquely identify a person's browser.

In addition to tracking Web visits, this cookie allows NSA to single out an individual's communications among the sea of Internet data in order to send out software that can hack that person's computer. The slides say the cookies are used to "enable remote exploitation," although the specific attacks used by the NSA against targets are not addressed in these documents.

According to the report, the NSA does not use this technology to sort through vast amounts of online data, but rather to key in on people already under suspicion.

[Pholus]

1. Bad NSA, no cookie for you!

Up to this point, I had thought the monitoring was sufficiently broad that we were all schweened regardless of search engine used.

But if cookies are specifically desired by the NSA, it's time to use duckduckgo instead of google.